"Professor" Reggie von Zurbach

This morning, while examining the latest lists of mad petitions, I found "Limit postal/proxy votes to valid absence", which I thought about blogging on. Then I noticed that the submitter, Prof Reggie von Zugbach, had a rather nutty name which I thought I remembered seeing before. So I Googled.

The first two hits are PM petitions (the proxy votes one I mention above and one asking the PM to "Ignore Third World Hype" on the grounds that no one in the UK cares).

The third link takes us to a post about a petition about a possible cancer treatment at the very wonderful Quackometer site which comments on quacky news stories.

Then we get a page in Hansard (effectively the minutes from the Houses of Parliament) where an MP talked, in 1996, about a stalking case involving Mrs von Zugbach. The MP tells us that Prof von Zugbach "is an author, a former Army major and a lecturer in management studies at Paisley university".

By this point my "just how real is this" detector was pinging madly. Somehow these don't seem like the normal sort of Google hits a professor in this day and age might expect. So I tested with the names - common and unusual - of assorted Professors of my acquaintance. (Go is a marvellous hobby. You meet the most eccentric academics.) And, indeed, the first hits tend to be their professional websites, then perhaps their Go rating, then references to alarming academic papers.

So I went to the University of Paisley website. Where no amount of searching results in Prof vonZugbach's name. A Google search on the Paisley domain gave me two PDFs about research at Paisley in 1999-2000 (where von Zugbach is listed, without titles or qualifications, in a list that may be that of academic staff in the Business School, but doesn't actually say what it's a list of, and also cited as a co-author on various academic papers published in, variously, "Department of Management & Marketing Working Papers Vol 2", "Frank Cass", "STUC Research Conference" and "Defense Analysis") and in 2000-2001 (where von Zugbach is definitely not listed as a member of staff of the Business School, but is cited as a co-author on a paper published in "Defense Analysis"). A re-examination of the University of Paisley Business School shows that von Zugbach is certainly not there now.

Sliding further down the page of Google results we finally find what look like some academic credentials: Professor von Zugbach is a Senior Faculty Member at Knightsbridge University. That's, erm - Knightsbridge University, the "free, autonomous and self-validating organisation". Where he is a "Senior Academic Advisor & Visiting Professor".

Call me an intellectual snob and you'll be right. But this is not the calibre of Professor I am inclined to take seriously at the best of times; his insistence on using the title Professor when signing petitions completely unrelated to his field of study leave me singularly unimpressed.

OK, it's not quite as bad as definitely-not-Dr Gillian McKeith, but it's dubious at best. A singularly inappropriate devaluation of the title "Professor".

And a complete and utter crackpot, to judge by the petitions he's created (the one about proxy votes mentioned above, a request for an English/Welsh language test before permitting UK voting (go, go the Jim Crow laws - probably this would be illegal under EU legislation anyway, wouldn't it?) and a request that it be permitted to ban "sectarian (eg head scarves) clothing in the work place", possibly among others) and several of the ones he's signed (most of the ones I've looked at seem to be of the Isolationist type - stopping people from voting unless they're Pure, sort of thing).

On the plus side, while all of this has left a nasty taste in my mouth, I have discovered the Quackometer. That may make it all worthwhile.